House Arrest
by Agent66
Summary: They were going to be grounded for a month. They were going to kill each other, well, that's what April thought. Just how the heck did they managed that?


A/N: I'll make this quick and short. First TMNT venture, but author in several other fandoms. This is based on the 2003 cartoon, so seasons 1-5 are free game, though I use the mention of April and Casey's marriage from Back to the Sewers. Many thanks to fellow authors Mikell and Rhoda J. Thank you ladies, for your encouragement, enthusiasm, and enjoyment. Please check out their stories here on .

This a prequel/sequel to another story "Just the Facts". It's neccessary to read this first and then continue to the other fic.

**DISCLAIMER** - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their characters are properties of Eastman, Laird, and Mirage Studios. The use of their likeness is for enterntainment purposes and no money is being made off this feature. Storyline is copyrighted to Regina Woodard.

**HOUSE ARREST**

It started as a normal Saturday, at least that's what April O'Neill was feeling by the end of her work day. It had been a fairly busy day, with her antique shop buzzing with people in the morning hours and drifting off by the afternoon. She was a bit of a workaholic by nature, owning and running Second Time Around, there would be times that she looked forward to the end of her shift and the thought of a little mindless television or a hot bath would only fuel her wish to close down early.

This night would be especially great, as it was official movie night, which meant she would be expecting guests around six o'clock. And if she understood correctly, this would probably be the last time in a while that she'd be able to see her friends. Waving to the last customer and locking the door behind them, April started the process of closing the shop. She still had about three hours before her 'little brothers' would show up and that made her smile.

Had it been nearly seven years since she stumbled across four mutant turtles and a rat in the sewers of New York? It certainly didn't seem that way, but when she thought about it, of course she'd known them for a long time. They were her family after all. It hadn't even seemed strange at first, that she would be thinking of five mutants as extended family; April had been on her own for a very long time before she met the guys. Her parents had passed away, her younger sister Robin lived at least twelve states away, and she hadn't heard from her Uncle Augustus since she was a teenager.

Fate must've been on her side because one day she was a lab assistant to Dr. Baxter Stockman, the next she was his future victim. And then she had been rescued by teenage mutant ninja turtles. From there, it had been a rollercoaster ride with aliens, monsters, evil ninjas and their master, a government agent bent on destroying the world, other universes, other dimensions…at this point, April didn't think she would be surprised by _anything_ anymore.

_Well, not if you don't count me marrying Casey Jones, _she thought, amusedly. Two months later, she was still trying to adjust to being April O'Neill –_Jones_, though she would only hyphenate the name to get her husband's dander up. In fact, if it wasn't for her four green adopted turtle brothers, she never would've met Casey in the first place, nor would she have found her uncle again. Shaking her head, she realized she had spent nearly ten minutes just thinking. Finally finishing up the last of the day's chores, April headed to the upstairs apartment she shared with her husband and started to get ready for the night.

She wanted to hear why this was her brothers' last night of freedom.

At six ten and twelve seconds, the door to the O'Neill-Jones residence was rattled by a series of knocks that could be counted as a small drum solo gone wild. "Gosh," Casey Jones said, rolling his eyes. "I wonder who could be at the door." Walking to it and holding it open, the occupants inside weren't surprised to see a green, walking, talking turtle burst through in dramatic pose.

"Tis I!" It cried. "Your friendly neighborhood…"

"Moron." Finished the turtle behind him, punctuating the sentence with a smack to the first turtle's head.

"Ow! Leo, Raph hit me!"

"You're tellin' me Master Splinter is gonna leave you guys alone in the lair for a month?" Casey asked in disbelief. "You're all doomed."

"And movie night has officially begun."

"No April," replied a third turtle, this one who had quietly slipped around the excitement at the door in order to get inside. "It's not officially movie night until…"

"Raph, will you stop hitting him?"

"Leo, will you shut up?"

"Ah," sighed the third. "There we go. _Now_ it's officially started."

April shook her head, while letting out a small laugh. Her boys were never far from excitement or danger. She was nearly on pins and needles to hear about this latest adventure that would keep them away from her. "Hey!" she cried, motioning to the three turtles who seemed to be arguing. "Larry, Moe, Curly, come over here and give me a hand in the kitchen."

"Soitenly!" replied the turtle called Michelangelo as he quickly followed the host into the kitchen. Grumbling quietly, the more vocal of the turtles followed his brother as well.

"What'll it be, boys?" April asked, checking cupboards and cabinets. "Popcorn?"

"Popped corn!" exclaimed Mikey.

"Crackers?"

"Healthy or cholesterol laden?"

"Give him the healthy crackers," Donatello whispered to her.

"He's picky."

"He's Mikey; he'll eat anything." Turning to his brother, he said, "Cholesterol laden, of course!"

"Yes!"

"Pizza?" asked Raphael.

"I was thinking Chinese myself," Leonardo said.

"I want Mexican." The youngest turtle whined.

"No one cares what you want," Raph muttered, raising his hand as to hit him. It got the job done as Mikey screamed and hid behind Don. "Donnie?"

"I was thinking Greek."

"Oh," April perked up. "Greek does sound good."

"Yeah, doesn't it?"

"I'm hungry!"

"You're always hungry," Casey said, walking into the room and leaning against the doorjamb. "What'll be, babe? Gory and no story or…lovely?"

"We're not going through that again!" the red head exclaimed. "We're not having that 'Notebook' issue."

"I liked 'The Notebook'," Leo said.

"You would," his brother grumbled.

"It was a very touching story."

"Oh, it touched me alright," Raph complained. "Right in the pit of my stomach."

"That my friend," Donnie said, addressing his brother in red. "Was a product of the bad meat you had from the hoagie we told you not to eat."

Raph scrunched his face up in confusion. "I don't remember that."

"That's because you started to hallucinate twenty five minutes into the film."

"I…did not…" Looking to his older brother, the turtle gave him a look that demanded Leo corrected these lies. Of course, Leo always did the opposite of what Raph wanted to do. The elder brother shrugged, as if to say 'sorry, but all true', causing the glare already sent his way to become deadlier. "Yeah, well," Raph said. "I still blame you."

"Big surprise."

"Guys?" April asked, steering the conversation back to the importance of being in the kitchen. "Dinner?"

"How do we feel about Mexican?" Mikey asked, hopefully.

"We've already said no," Leo replied. "Italian?"

"Hey!" Mikey responded. "Pizza?"

"No!"

Suddenly, Casey snapped his fingers. "Roscoe's," he said, grin on his face. "They got everything there! Hoagies, burgers, dogs, gyros…an all in one stop shop."

"My man, Casey," Raph said, patting the guy on the shoulder. "Always thinking. Well, not really, but hey! First time for everything, right?"

"I'm gonna make sure your hoagie comes back with a big loogie," the vigilante sneered. "Or special sauce. I haven't decided yet."

"You keep your loogies and your special sauce away from my food, man!"

"Well, that's put me off of food for the time being," April sighed. "Casey – food, movie. Go. You four, get to tell me why I won't be seeing you for a month."

"Oh, you heard about that, huh?" Raph asked.

"Not really," she said, arching an eyebrow. "I wouldn't have asked otherwise. All I know is Donnie said this was the last movie night for a while. So what I want to know is, what did you do that got you grounded?"

"What makes you think we did something wrong?" Mikey asked, innocently and received several looks of incredulity. "Okay," he conceded. "Dumb question. Just know it was something big that's got us under house arrest for a month."

"And Splinter decided this?" April asked, incredulously. "Is he crazy? You'll kill each other."

"No we won't," Donnie said.

"Yes," April insisted, chuckling. "You will. For a month? You told me he nearly put an end to patrols. You'll kill each other."

"What?"

"Who do you think would die first?" Mikey asked, earning looks from his brothers. "What? It's a legitimate question!"

"Are you kidding?" the red head laughed. "Mike, you'll be the first to go!"

"What?"

"Well, that was easy," Raph chuckled.

"Shut up!" Mikey said, obviously annoyed. "Why would I be the first to go?"

"Mikey, I love you," April said. "But even I can admit that sometimes, you can be a bit much."

"I'm a large personality!"

"Yeah," Raph snickered. "To go with your large butt."

"I'll have you know I'd easily last one month with these ass clowns."

"Ass clown!?"

"Mikey, please," sputtered April. She could barely contain her laughter at how haughty her baby brother had gotten. "I'd give you eleven minutes." The look on his face, as his mouth dropped and his eyes widened broke it for the shop owner and apparently it had the same effect on his brothers, too, as they began to laugh in hysterics.

"And just how exactly would I die?"

"If Raph didn't kill you, all three of them would."

"Oh," the younger turtle huffed. "And I suppose Fearless, Grumpy, and Doc here would last so much longer!"

"More than eleven minutes," Donnie chuckled. "That barely gives you enough time to walk through the door."

"Mikey," April gasped, trying her best to sooth the upset turtle. "Think of it this way. At least you wouldn't be around for the tension that'll surface with these three."

"What're you talking about?" Donnie asked.

"Without Mikey to be some sort of buffer," April reasoned. "The three of you will still kill each other."

"You don't think I could buffer?"

"Yeah!" Mikey exclaimed, seeing a happy outcome to this. "Who's next? Who's next?"

"If I had to guess," she shrugged. "I'd say Raph."

"What?" the mentioned turtle cried.

"With your temper?" April pointed out. "Donnie and Leo will team up against you. Not unless you got to them first, which would still be hard."

"You don't think I could beat Leo and Donnie?"

"Look," she said. "This is how it would work – you'd either kill Leo and then be killed by Don or vice versa. Or be killed by the both of them. Three different scenarios."

"How come I didn't get three different scenarios!?" Mikey exclaimed.

"Cause you were dead in the first eleven minutes."

"So how do Donnie and I die?" asked Leo.

"That's a little trickier," April said. "See…the two of you are pretty patient, so you wouldn't just go about killing the other in a flash. I bet you'd get to the last week and either you would use your ninja skills to ambush Donnie in the middle of the night or you'd walk into a Donnie trap. Or you both end stepping into each other's traps and die."

All four turtles looked at her in surprise. "You've spent some time thinking about this, haven't you?" Donnie asked, with a smirk.

"Sometimes I get bored downstairs," the red head stated. "My mind wanders. You should see the stuff I think about when you guys _are_ here."

"You mean what we'd be like if we were girls?"asked Donnie, knowingly.

"How'd you know?"

"You two are weird," Raph muttered.

"Whatever," April giggled, rolling her eyes playfully. "You still haven't told me why Master Splinter grounded you with each other's company for a month."

At this, the turtles looked at each other hesitantly. "Well," Don began. "You remember last Friday when Master Splinter came over to watch that soap-a-thon?"


End file.
